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Sharron Angle hit with R-J copyright infringement lawsuit
Las Vegas Sun ^ | 04 sept 2010 | Steve Green

Posted on 09/04/2010 3:59:07 AM PDT by rellimpank

The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s copyright infringement lawsuit partner on Friday sued U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle over R-J material posted on her website, allegedly without authorization.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas by Righthaven LLC, seeks damages of $150,000 against Angle personally and forfeiture of her website domain name sharronangle.com.

The Democratic Party of Nevada, which has also been sued by Righthaven, charged in an Aug. 23 press release that the Review-Journal had a double standard to “hold Angle harmless while suing the Democratic Party and progressive organizations.”

(Excerpt) Read more at lasvegassun.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: lvrj; righthaven
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--FR mentioned in article--
1 posted on 09/04/2010 3:59:12 AM PDT by rellimpank
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To: rellimpank

Righthaven is sure making a lot of friends these days.

sarc/


2 posted on 09/04/2010 4:04:33 AM PDT by Ronin (If it were not so gruesomely malevolent, Islam would just be silly.)
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To: rellimpank

If the courts don’t stop this they will be buried by these suits. Other lawyers will pile on. ....Anything for a buck.


3 posted on 09/04/2010 4:05:59 AM PDT by Anti-Bubba182
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To: rellimpank
Dingy Harry is calling in ALL favors to save his corupt arse.

Being a member of the ruling Marxist junta of Soros/Obama/Pelosi/Reid can make even the most scurrilious and disingenuous accusation seem legit with the MSM in your pocket.

4 posted on 09/04/2010 4:07:06 AM PDT by Happy Rain ("K Marx had 7 kids-only 3 lived to maturity-of those 2 committed suicide.")
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To: rellimpank

This is the only way the dinosaur media can stay in business. File lawsuits. Pretty great business model....< / s >


5 posted on 09/04/2010 4:07:12 AM PDT by freebilly (No wonder the left has a boner for Obama. There's CIALIS in soCIALISt....)
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To: rellimpank

Interesting that they also seek to have her forfeit her campaign domain name.

Is this a typical request for copyright infringement charges? Seems like they’d just request that the content be pulled off or some financial compensation.

But to also request that her campaign domain name be forfeited, in the middle of a very hotly contested race seems a bit suspicious.


6 posted on 09/04/2010 4:07:19 AM PDT by MDspinboyredux
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To: MDspinboyredux

Especially when she gave then full credit for the content.


7 posted on 09/04/2010 4:18:55 AM PDT by mazda77 (Rubio for US Senate - West FL22nd - Scott for FL Gov. - Miller AK US Senate)
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To: rellimpank

just wondering, how did the lawsuit against google turned out. I remember a while ago, some media companies tried to sue google for google news section, because google news basically cut/paste excerpts with link to source. In fact, freerepublic is pretty much guilty of the same thing


8 posted on 09/04/2010 4:34:38 AM PDT by 4rcane
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To: Ronin
Righthaven misgauges this market. The reason no one ever got started into micro-suits for micro-copyright infringement was they did not want retaliation.

This sort of thing has always been possible ~ newspapers could have pulled it on each other simply by hiring students part time to go through their university news racks to check for otherwise obscure violations.

Today all you need to do is hire an unemployed young person to spend his time in his mother's basement matching up that which appears in the LVJ with stuff elsewhere. In some cases LVJ may well be the source. But, in other cases they won't ~ and if they don't have a release then they are a violator.

Many of the duplicated items will have been run through AP and other "wire services" but as many folks here have noticed AP, et al, are much less careful about how and what they "lift" than they were years back. Even some of the AP stuff appearing in LVJ may well be in violation of copyright.

In many cases a careful analyst would be able to track back to the original source and offer to split the profits by joining in an organized suit against LVJ ~ knowing that the judge will not be sympathetic to LVJ.

LVJ has made this bed and I suspect they can be put out of business the same way.

9 posted on 09/04/2010 4:42:57 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Ronin

I guess that is the only way he can make a living. Sueing is more lucrative than writing


10 posted on 09/04/2010 4:45:24 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. N.C. +12 ..... Greetings Jacques. The revolution is coming)
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To: MDspinboyredux

It is probably a violation of several campaign laws ~ so time for the legal beagles to find out what sort of felony charges can be laid on Righthaven for this. I’m sure they feel it’s just boilerplate and perfectly acceptable, but there are older laws not often used that keep the Republicans from calling themselves Democrats, and for keeping the Democrats from calling themselves the National Socialist-Workers Party.


11 posted on 09/04/2010 4:45:48 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Happy Rain

Actually this doesn’t appear to be political. Righthaven are equal opportunity douchenozzles...they’ve sued FR, they’ve sued the DUmp, they’ve sued both major political parties in Nevada. To them, it’s all nothing more than a “revenue stream.”

}:-)4


12 posted on 09/04/2010 5:24:48 AM PDT by Moose4 (November 2, 2010--the day that "YES WE CAN" becomes "OH NO YOU DIN'T")
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To: freebilly
Pretty great business model....< / s >

Yes, it seemed to work great for SCO. They finally went bankrupt after dragging some pretty big players through the legal process. They only fed the monkeys (lawyers).

You cannot litigate a profit.

13 posted on 09/04/2010 5:28:35 AM PDT by Texas Fossil (Government, even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.)
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To: rellimpank
forfeiture of her website domain

O rly.
14 posted on 09/04/2010 5:40:01 AM PDT by visualops (Proud Air Force Mom)
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To: muawiyah

[and if they don’t have a release then they are a violator]

I’ve wondered this too. Every time a reporter gets a story, shouldn’t they be technically getting arelease from eveeryone they interview? Has Sharron Angle given the RJ a release for every article they’ve written about her? I’m petrified of Righthaven, not that they will win long term (it would be a cataclysm), but the amount of damage they can do short term.


15 posted on 09/04/2010 5:48:13 AM PDT by DaxtonBrown (HARRY: Money Mob & Influence (See my Expose on Reid on amazon.com written by me!))
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To: DaxtonBrown
Interviews are copyrighted by the interviewer, not the interviewee unless it's for commercial use and then you need a release from each participant (as I recall from sitting there discussing copyright law for years and years with postal lawyers).

I could be wrong because I haven't kept up on every subtle nuance or minor change, but ya gotstahave "copy" to "copy right" it, and oral discussion isn't, per se, copyrightable.

Used to be the case that you had to mark your "copy" to assert a "copyright" but when we flipped over to the international standards several decades back that was no longer needed.

I

16 posted on 09/04/2010 5:57:04 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: Moose4
When you sue a protected class such as an organized political party there's always the danger of violating the state criminal statutes.

It's my thought here that Righthaven didn't bother checking to see if any state laws apply in these cases since "copyright" is a federal issue.

But, alas, conducting an economic attack against a regular political party's candidate is a whole 'nuther game, and even the federal civil rights laws might apply here, particularly since the Republican candidate is a member of SEVERAL DOZEN protected classes!

17 posted on 09/04/2010 6:01:57 AM PDT by muawiyah
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To: muawiyah

In a sense, I don’t care if you are right about interviewees not having copyright. I think Righthaven is pushing for novel interpretations of the law, so I see no reason not to offer up our own interpretations. The RJ has opened a can of worms with this, I think they will be surprised at the blowback. They will be caught in endless litigation like SCO, it is a dinosaur strategy.


18 posted on 09/04/2010 6:29:01 AM PDT by DaxtonBrown (HARRY: Money Mob & Influence (See my Expose on Reid on amazon.com written by me!))
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To: rellimpank

Maybe the true purpose of the Righthaven lawsuits has now come to light - especially since the liberal Las Vegas Sun’s editor couldn’t quite bring himself to criticize the R/J for employing Righthaven to engage in what seems like cut-and-dried First Amendment violations. It would be interesting to take a closer look at the lawsuit targets. I’ll bet there are a dearth of liberal blogs among them.


19 posted on 09/04/2010 6:36:49 AM PDT by Mr. Jeeves ( "The right to offend is far more important than any right not to be offended." - Rowan Atkinson)
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To: rellimpank

Well, Angle did apparently have entire articles posted at her web site.

Without prior approval, I don’t know why anybody would ever think they have the right to just grab copyrighted articles and post them to their own personal web site.

I understand why content providers like YouTube and FreeRepublic can’t be expected to police individual posters ahead of time, but that doesn’t cover people posting things to their own web site.

Heck, I even ask permission before I post my own opinion columns in full anywhere (and at the moment, I don’t have permission to do so, although we are still working on it). So I EXCERPT my own words, since they were bought by someone else.


20 posted on 09/04/2010 7:38:52 AM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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